Depending on how techie you are, Apple's WWDC announcements last week left you with one of these impressions:

• “No new iPhone?! LAME.”
• “PATHETIC. Android has had all of that for years!”
• "HOLY. SHIT. MINDBLOWN."

If you're in the first group, you're most likely a consumer and not a developer. We have to remember, WWDC — short for World Wide Developer Conference — is a developer conference. For developers. Not consumers.

If you're in the second group, I got news for you: everyone copies. That's how technology moves forward. The best ideas are copied, remixed, refined, and evolve. As long as consumers win, why do we still need to argue about this?

If you're in the last group, you are either an iOS developer or an Apple enthusiast, and have a solid understanding/appreciation of how Apple does things.

As a developer and user experience designer, my job entails identifying specific user problems, researching/testing the right solutions, and delivering them to the right people at the right time. My passion lies in finding what makes new technology meaningful to real people, not just early adopting techies like me.

With that said, I'll try to break down all the developer stuff into real world examples for you.

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Former Apple Genius, Scotty Loveless, shares his insights on iOS battery drain from his two years of working as an Apple Genius.

Two things stuck out to me:

I have confirmed this behavior on multiple iPhones with the same result: percentage points actually increase after disabling these background functions of Facebook.

After iOS 7's changes to multitasking, this sheds some light for me:

By closing the app, you take the app out of the phone's RAM . While you think this may be what you want to do, it's not. When you open that same app again the next time you need it, your device has to load it back into memory all over again. All of that loading and unloading puts more stress on your device than just leaving it alone. Plus, iOS closes apps automatically as it needs more memory, so you're doing something your device is already doing for you. You are meant to be the user of your device, not the janitor.

The truth is, those apps in your multitasking menu are not running in the background at all: iOS freezes them where you last left the app so that it's ready to go if you go back. Unless you have enabled Background App Refresh, your apps are not allowed to run in the background unless they are playing music, using location services, recording audio, or the sneakiest of them all: checking for incoming VOIP calls , like Skype. All of these exceptions, besides the latter, will put an icon next to your battery icon to alert you it is running in the background.

Buzz around the fabled "iWatch" has really hit fever-pitch levels since 9to5Mac's big scoop. Here's an overview of everything that we know, what we should expect, and what I think could happen.

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Microsoft's biggest apologist finally admits that Windows 8 is a total disaster.

If you look back over the decades at the many high-level complaints that have been leveled at Windows, one in particular sticks out: Unlike Mac OS, in particular, Windows has always attempted to satisfy every possible customer need, and as such it often provides multiple ways to accomplish the same thing. The result is a messy product, if you will, one that lacks the singular vision that is typically associated with the Mac and Apple's other products.

There's no reason to mince words: This criticism has always been valid. And if you were to simplify the issue down to a sound bite, you might make the following claims: Windows was designed by a committee. The Mac, by contrast, often feels like it was designed by a single person.

I still believe there's hope for Microsoft and I totally agree with what Thurrott proposes:

I always accepted the messy bits of Windows in the past because the system addressed such a large audience. But given the way things are going, Windows should evolve into a system that is laser targeted to the customers who will in fact continue using it regularly. That's mostly business users, but even when you look at the consumers who will use Windows, that usage is almost entirely productivity related. Windows should focus on that. On getting work done. On an audience of doers. Job one should be productivity.

Everyone likes to compare Apple or the Mac to BMW and, you know what? Fair enough, and if that's true then Windows is obviously GM, the overly-big messy GM of a decade ago. But Microsoft can't afford for Windows to be like GM anymore—just like GM couldn't, for whatever that's worth. Maybe Windows needs to be more like GMC, the part of GM that only makes trucks (and truck-based SUVs). After all, while many people choose to use a truck for basic transportation, they're really designed and optimized for work. You know, as should be Windows.

You can't please everybody, Microsoft. So stop trying. It's time to double down on the people who actually use your products, not some mythical group of consumers who will never stop using their simpler Android and iOS devices just because you wish they would.

This week's court ruling was a HUGE blow to the internet as we know it. The common consumer has no idea what this means but they will when they start to see things like this.

You don't think this is a big deal? Just look at how US news networks deemphasize news that they don't care about. Just look at how much carriers overcharge for texting.

Information is power and now internet providers have the ability to control the flow of information as they say fit.

As part of my annual tradition, here is a list of my favorite apps, services, and tech products that I used throughout 2013.

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Rene Ritchie just nails it with this piece.

I've been using Snapchat for the past few months, and admittedly, it took me a while to "get it." The more I used it, I realized it's a nice way of sending photos to close friends for those "Hey I saw this and thought of you" -type moments

But then I started adding more friends. And the more friends I added, the more random, impersonal, obviously mass-sent messages started coming my way.

Most of these messages were things I'd scroll past if they were on my Instagram timeline. But no, because it was Snapchat, I'd receive a push notification for every single one. Every single selfie. Every single low-quality food porn pic. Every single video from a club that is too dark and too loud to provide any value.

It just got too annoying.

Thankfully, Instagram Direct is here and there are a few key differentiators that make it more suited for me.

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Just look at the top end of that China bell curve. That's a lot of fucking cheddar.

Tristan Louis, Forbes:

Every step of the way, the company focused on reducing friction and providing increased value for the user when its competitors asked the users to do more work. The net result is that users have voluntarily provided all the components Apple now needs to enable a payment revolution. And we’re about to witness the rise of the iWallet, maybe not this year but pretty soon.

While all the doubters are busy proclaiming "Apple is doomed without Steve Jobs" and "Apple doesn't innovate," Apple's been quietly laying the foundation for a major mobile payments revolution.